MACKIE — THE AERONAUTS OF THE SOLEHUOFEN AGE. 



7 



is, just where we suspect the head might have been. The cranium, 

 it is true, may be still in one or other of the slabs, or it never may 

 have been in either at all. If the bird is the rejected or lost prey of 

 some stronger creature, the head may have been torn off, and with 

 the attached neck, may have been left on the dry ground else- 

 where, or deposited in some other place miles away. But the pre- 

 sence or known existence of the head would have prevented any 

 reptilian mystery ; and the current statement that the head of the 

 Guadaloupe human skeleton in the British Museum is in a museum 

 in South Carolina, causes one to feel a silent hope that by no similar 

 secretive principle may we be astonished hereafter by the discovery 

 of the head of Archseopteryx in some Continental museum. In 

 the block there is a semicircular portion, apparently of bone, which we 

 have suspected might be a part of the skull ; but we certainly should 

 experience something like a sensation of relief, if we were to learn that 

 through the aid of the Museum lapidary, the head was yet existent in 

 the matrix. However, for what we have got we ought to be thankful ; 

 and especially are our praises due to the learned Superintendent of 

 the Natural History Department, for his able, lucid, perspicuous, and 

 convincing interpretation of these extraordinary remains. 



Since the above was written, Mr. Henry "Woodward has kindly 

 handed us the cast (fig. 1, p. 1) of the interior of the skull of a 

 carrion crow, which has been prepared by Mr. John Evans, E.S.A., 

 who was struck with the resemblance, as he fancied, between the 

 brain of a bird and the little limestone concretion within the bone- 

 mark to which we have referred. 



This suggestion was so probable, that we at once instituted a close 

 comparison, and with the assistance of Mr. Carter Blake, we believe 

 we have decisively made out the actual parts of the brain indicated 

 by that seemingly unimportant protuberance, and for the aj)t means 

 of the determination of which too much praise cannot be given to 

 Mr. Evans. The story then, as we read it, is that a portion of the 

 skull, and what may be termed the fossil brain, still remain in the 

 slab. We will now attempt to describe this protuberance in the 

 limestone as a fossil brain. The anterior part of the brain is pre- 

 sented vertically to the spectator, or stands out perpendicularly from 

 the face of the stone. At its apex the site of the olfactory lobes are 

 very evident, as is also, running down towards them, the median line. 



The inturned edge of the cerebral hemispheres is also easily made 

 out, and some trace of the optic lobe beneath the brain may perhaps 



